


Some Nights

by IraBragi



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce is dead (and he's not coming back), Bruce was not a great father, Dick and Jayson are going to have figure out how to raise two little bats, Gen, Good Big Brother Dick Grayson, Good Big Brother Jason Todd, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Vaguely my take on how "The Fight for the Cowl" could have gone differently, and Dick is going to have to pick up the pieces, trying to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 17:06:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraBragi/pseuds/IraBragi
Summary: At sixteen he had been so sure that he was ready to be a man, to be everything that Bruce had taught him to be.  At twenty six he wondered if he’d ever known the man he called father.Bruce Wayne is dead leaving behind four grieving children.  Batman is dead leaving behind four damaged men.  Now to pick up the pieces.





	Some Nights

**Author's Note:**

> Title is based on the song Some Nights by Fun. You should definitely not listen to it while imagining each of the bat boys singing it.

**Jason** :

“ _You thought I was a monster. You wanted him to put me down because you didn’t have the guts to do it yourself.”_

When he was six Jason had fallen from a chair trying to get something from the top shelf and sliced his arm open on the corner of the stove. His mother had been too strung out to hear the crash. The scar had almost looked like a pair of wings. Now he looked down at his perfectly smooth forearm.

_“Fuck you old man, how dare you take the easy way out.”_

Alfred knew he was here. Not that Jason had announced his presence, in fact he had gone through considerable trouble to hide his arrival two days before; but that hadn't stop sandwiches and a thermos of hot tea from appearing outside of the guest room that he had stowed his back-up guns in.

“ _You thought you were so much better than me. I should toss you into that pit and let it bring you back. Let it show you who you really are, then watch everyone else learn the truth.”_ Bitterness twisted through his veins like lava. Bitterness and a creeping exhaustion.

He couldn't do it. 

“ _You either die a hero or live long enough to become a the villain._ ” Bruce had told him that once. A rare moment of morphine induced honesty after a bad patrol.

At least he knew who he was. He was Jason _fucking_ Todd. The bad one. The dead Robin. The one who had it coming. The one who should have stayed dead. The one who never thought they would have to bury another parent.

Across the room a lone figure stood in front of a mahogany box. Even from fifteen feet away Jason could see the dark circles under Dick's eyes; they were only color left in his face. 

Jason wished he could hate him too. It should be so easy: Dick Grayson, the golden boy, the real robin…. the boy who had always been kind to him, even when he had come into Dick’s home, taken his place, never measured up to the legacy. 

Then again he was beginning to wonder if any of them had ever measured up. He was beginning to wonder what the measurement even was.

\----------------

The first time Jason had met Damian he had looked the shorter boy up and down then whistled.

“Well I’ll be, Batty really did knock the ice queen up!” He only just dogged the attempted stabbing. “Calm down brat, I’m not disrespecting your ma. She’s a good woman.” It was the gratefulness that flashed across Damian’s face that had caught him off guard. Like he hadn’t expected to hear that. The glower on Bruce’s face had been _exactly_ what Jason expected though.

When he saw the kid last night it had been brief and at a distance but his gut had been screaming that something was wrong. Jason knew what grief looked like, but whatever had happened to that child was a hell of a lot more than just grief. 

An empty room where his replacement (he couldn't quite bring himself to call him _Tim_ ) should have been living pushed another piece of the puzzle into place. Bruce though that he was making heroes… there were no heroes in this house of broken things and ghosts.

\---------------

Across the room Dick stood over the casket. Nobody had ever accused Jason Todd of thinking before he acted.

“I didn’t know if you would come.”

Dick turns, and Jason can’t tell if its exhaustion or relief that makes him step into the hug and hold on for all he is worth. 

“I didn't come for him.”

As he speaks them he can feel the truth in his words. 

**Dick:**

The sound of strikes against the training dummy echoed in the bat cave. Dick’s tie felt like it was strangling him but he couldn’t quite bring himself to take it off, to admit that it was over. The service had been lovely. Across the room a harsh breath hissed in pain and the blows continued to rain down on the hapless mannequin.

“It’s late Damian” The boy’s suite was in shreds and his knuckles didn’t look much better. “I know Alfred has some leftovers tucked away upstairs for you, maybe you could…” Oh damn this. 

\----------------

_“Are you going to fucking man up already or are you just like him?” Dick though that he’d made a rather nice eulogy. Cried at all the right parts, stood stoically when needed, and thrown his handful of dirt into the pit right on cue. Nothing to earn Jason shoving him against the hallway wall and glaring down into his face. When had Jason gotten taller than him? “I said, are you going to man up and…”_

_“Why are you still here Jason?” The hold lessens but is followed by a mulish glare._

_“Well someone has to be.”_

_“I fail to see how pushing me around is help…”_

_“Damian hasn't eaten since they got back, and I’m pretty sure that he sprained his hand, possibly broke his thumb as well.” Jason is looking at him like he just asked what two plus three equals and for the life of him Dick can’t work out the equation. The glare intensifies as the silence drags and finally Jason spits at the ground and keeps talking._

_“I don’t much like The Replacement, he’s batty as a loon and nobody should be able to drink that much coffee, but even_ I _can see that he headed for a cliff. And the brat is half a second away from straight up snapping. I promised his mother…”_

_“You knew Talia?” For some reason this is the piece of information that Dick’s brain latches on to.”_

_“Yeah. I wasn’t kidding when I said I owed her. So I’ll say this once: You need to fix this. I don’t care what colors you wear, or that it’s not fucking fair, or that it shouldn't have to be your mess, somehow you have to make this right. They need you.”_

_Bruce liked to say that he was training him so Dick could be something more than he was, something better. To a ten year old it had sounded magical. Now..._

_“Maybe they need you too. Maybe_ I _need you.” He expects Jason to sneer at him, or maybe just walk away. Instead he looks at Dick oddly then drops his gaze to the ground._

_“Be careful what you wish for.” It’s half mumbled and oddly rough but when Dick reaches his hand out Jason takes it without hesitation._

\----------

Pulling off the tie Dick settled himself against a sawhorse and crossed his legs, waiting. A few feet away Damian paused his rhythm to squint at him then resumed his pounding.

\-----------

_Damian had showed up on a clear day eight months ago with little explanation and worse temper. Bruce’s son… Batman’s son. Angery, violent, short tempered, far too well trained for a ten year old child. So well trained that it was easy to miss the look that flashed across his face the first time Bruce had refused to take him into the field. “Too young and undisciplined” was what he said. “Not good enough, not my son” was what the boy had clearly heard._

\----------

“You know, whenever you get tired of murdering that dummy I could show you a few tumbles I bet you’ve never seen before.” Thwack, pause, thwack, thwack, pause…

“I have been instructed in five different forms of gymnastics.” The tone would have been haughty if the words don't sound like sandpaper against concrete.

“I’m sure you have.” He tossed off his coat and unbutton his cuffs, the pants were already a loss, and dropped into a stretch.

\-----------

_At sixteen he had been so sure that he was ready to be a man, to be everything that Bruce had taught him to be. At twenty six he wondered if he’d ever known the man he called father._

_He had been too busy becoming Nightwing to spend much time hanging out with his replacement. Maybe he was a bit jealous, irrational, seeing as he was the one who walked away, but still. Far too young to notice the grueling pace that Bruce was setting, the hours that Jason put in, only to turn around and finish homework instead of sleeping._

_It wasn’t until later, until he heard arguments about smoking in the house and drinking after patrol. Arguments that were clearly about something other than what they were shouting about that he began to realize that something was wrong. “Unpredictable.” “Defying authority.” “Unnecessary violence.” “Only a matter of time.” And then it was all a moot point anyway._

\------------

By the time Dick was warmed up and ready to start his favorite tumbling routine the thudding of Damian’s fists had slowed to almost nothing. Dick resolutely ignored the younger boy and launched himself into a complicated voly of twists and spins.

\------------ 

_Bruce grieved after Jason’s death. They all had. Alfred who’s face took on a pinched, far away look, and who though no one knew about the cookies that he made then threw away, the ones that had Jason loved to help bake. Bruce who seemed lost, swinging between anger and regret, with plenty of bourbon in between. And Dick… he hadn’t known what to call his feelings. He had considered Jason.... If not a brother, at least a brother-in-arms. A fellow Robin. Someone he had trusted with his back on patrol and his identity off. Now there was only a silent grave._

_He should have come back then. Should have found an old uniform and_ made _it fit. Instead he had been selfish. Gone of and explored the world, left Bruce alone. Came back to find yet another boy in the bat cave and Alfred’s hair just a bit more grey._

\----------

“You move well for someone clearly out of practice.” Dick fought back a grin at the younger boy’s verbal jab and landed two more somersaults before pausing.

“Why don’t you show me how I could do it better?” 

“Tt” Despite the hiss, Damian obligingly dropped into a crouch, only to explode into summersalt that twisted into a flip. Prickly personality aside, the kid was _good_.

\-----------

_Timothy Drake worked hard. Harder than anyone Dick had ever known. There was the obvious fanboying, of course. The way his eyes light up when he explained how he had tracked Batman and Robin down, only to lower guiltily as he stammered out the story of first time he had seen his heroes. Dick hadn’t tried to hide his glare at that. His parent’s death’s weren’t some story._

_But still the kid seemed solid. He was smart, he had a good head and a better heart, and he seemed to be good for Bruce. Maybe he should have wondered if Bruce was good for him._

\-----------

“If you keep your shoulders tucked tighter and your arms like this” he made sure to move slowly and telegraph from a mile away. It never was a good idea to surprise a vigilante. But Damian let him place a hand on his elbow and reposition it. He could feel the muscles shaking. How long had the boy been down here?

\------------

_Then Jason was back and itching for a fight and Bruce was itching to fight back. Sometimes he had wanted to bash both their heads in and lock them in a closet until they talked it out. But he was pretty sure that they would just tear down the building around them. And of course then Damian appeared. Because when had the universe ever though they had enough on their plates?_

\-----------

“You could land that jump if you rotate your hips more.” It might have been the most polite thing that Dick had ever heard Damian say. He nodded and tried the suggestion. His feet found the mat and held.

“You know it’s not your fault.” The look on the other boy’s face was carefully blank.

“I am not a child in need of coddling, Grayson.”

Fuck.

“Since you aren’t a child then why don’t you stop acting like one.” The words sound too harsh in his ears, but Damian turns around so he presses on. “Bruce chose to take you on that mission. He knew that the intel was incomplete, and he knew that it was a risk to move in.” 

\-------------

_Weapons smugglers who had an off-world contact. A secret base. A small window of opportunity. He knew every fact of the mission. Could recite them backwards in his sleep. In fact he was pretty sure that he had the last time had Alfred shook him awake and made him leave the cave to lie down in a real bed._

_The plane had gone down, communication had been cut. Still it should have been a doable mission, until it became clear that they had missed something vital._

\------------

“This wasn’t about you or Bruce or even the Justice League.” 

\------------

_A ship of aliens with weapons to sell. One bomb big enough to ensure that there wasn’t any earth left after the fact. Bruce doing what he always did. A hundred to one are bad odds even for the Bat of Gotham. The math wasn’t hard to understand… it’s just that they had all beaten the odds so many times before._

\------------

“You obeyed orders, you went back to the plane and you got help. If you hadn't Superman would have never gotten there in time to get the bomb off world.”

Damian was just standing there. Looking at something over his shoulder. But he was listening. Finally.

“You did what a Robin does. You obeyed orders and then you went back and you protected Batman.” He tries to scrape together a smile, “You think that I didn’t leave the batmobile after I was told to stay out of the way? Nope, you did everything right, and sometimes even that’s just not enough.” He wishes that Damian would cry, it would be easier to watch than seeing him shake from the effort of holding it in. “But do you know what we do when that happens?”

“What?” The word comes out as a croak and Dick steps across the mat and wraps an arm around the younger boy. To hell with giving him space.

“We get back up and we try again. That’s what it means to be a Robin. You fall but you never lose you wings.” He can feel the dampness on his sleeve. For a long time they stand there like that.

“Do you think he would have ever forgiven me?” For half a second Dick thinks that he understands how Jason can love and hate Bruce at the same time. 

“Eventually yes, but he would have been wrong.” He tips Damian’s chin up. Wonders how long it will be until the boy is taller than him. Wonders how on earth he is going to do this. Wonders if this is how Bruce felt when he brought him home. If he has any hope of not repeating the same mistakes.

“What he never would have understood was that there is nothing to forgive.” Something flashes in Damian’s eyes and Dick chooses to believe that it might be hope.

“Come on Little D, let’s get those hands bandaged up.” He turns and walks out of the cave and the younger boy follows him. 

**Tim:**

“I could fight you for it.” They are standing next to the glass case that holds the uniform. Not the one that they cut off Bruce… but the backup to his backup uniform. The funeral will be tomorrow. He hasn't slept in… well he can’t really remember. He wishes he was tired. Instead he just feels empty. 

“I deserve it. I’m a Robin same as you.” Dick looks even worse than him. 

“Bruce wouldn’t want…”

Tim cuts him off with a snort. “Do you know why he took the brat instead of me? Do you?” Dick shrugs. This conversation is making his head ach, although the fifth cup of coffee in his hand may not be helping either. “He was pissed with me. Wanted to make a point or something. Remind me that I’m disposable.”

Dick turns and walks away.

\-----------

“I won’t fight you.” 

The funeral is over. He should really leave but somehow he can’t bring himself to do it. Instead he’s sitting in his old room when Dick knocks on the door.

_“I won’t fight you.”_

The words echoed mockingly in his head. Good old Dick, so determined to do the right thing. Let’s just pretend that they were just one big happy family. The computer screen swam in front of him, the strings of letters and symbols blurring into meaninglessness. In the doorway Dick is still talking. 

“I don’t know what’s going to happen”

 _Don’t know?_ _More like didn’t want to admit._ Everyone _knew_ what was going to happen. Dick was the real deal, the original Robin. Jason was the lost sheep; forever loved, always forgiven. And Damian, Damian, was Bruce’s son. His _real_ son. 

His hands curled around the laptop case. He could feel the plastic creak and warp but he couldn’t let go. If he did, if he looked up and saw Dick standing there with his signature “I care about you” look on his face, something horrible was going to happen. 

He didn't know what exactly - maybe he would hurrle the computer at Dick’s head. Or scream. Screaming was always an option. Crying would work too, but that required being able to cry in the first place and he wasn’t sure he still knew how. He tightened his hands and stared at the screen.

“Bruce was many things, and Batman… I just don’t know. But I won’t fight you for it. I don’t care what you think he wanted. I won’t do it.”

It was the hitch in Dick’s voice that stopped him. Tim had watched Dick sit through twelve hour stakeouts in the rain, take bullets, take losing a hostage, take Bruce’s disapproving glare, and he had never heard the man sound unsure. Frightened sure, guilt sick, or furious, but nothing made Nightwing _unsure_.

“You’re not him, you know.”

It was a stupid thing to say. Bruce had been Dick’s father, his _idol_ , he wasn’t going to understand why Tim was so angry. Wasn’t going to take his side against a ghost. 

“I hope not.” 

Was… was he smiling? Tim risked a look.

“No matter what happens I want to fight beside you.”

All the air leaves Tim’s lungs, but Dick seems not to notice. Still smiling he leaves, gently closing the door behind him. Tim sat for a long time staring at the door.

**Damian:**

_“Bruce Wayne - Beloved son and friend”_

The only indication that Damian is aware of the woman when she materializes beside him is the nearly imperceptible tensing of his shoulders. For long moments they stand silently, studying the grey headstone.

“Have you come to take me back Mother?” His voice doesn't shake, showing fear only leads to pain.

“Do you want to leave this place?”

He considers his options. “I am useful here.” She nods.

“He was a strong man, made of iron. I knew that you would learn much from him.”

“Does my progress displeased you Mother?” They both hear the real questions, _“Did I kill him? Do you hate me? Why was I never good enough for him?_ ”

“When I realized that I was carrying you, do you know what my only regret was?” Wordlessly he shakes his head. “Your father was the strongest man I know. I knew that you would have his blood. As my son you were born a prince, destined to rule the earth. Two destinies that would demand you be more than any man has ever been before. My only grief was that for you to carry that legacy you would have to be stronger than either of us.” She places a hand on his shoulder and turns him to face her, a strange urgency in her voice.

“You are old enough to decide; where do you chose to fight my son?”

“Dic… the new Bat, would die of incompetence if I was not here to assist him.” 

Her lips quirk to the side. “I do not doubt that.”

“I believe my path is here for now… perhaps for... a long time?” He wants her permission, wants to believe that he can have this. It will be many years before he understands why she looks both sad and relieved.

“Then make us proud; just as you always have.” She steps forward and bends, briefly touching the marble. It was the only farewell she would allow herself.

“Son.”

“Mother.”

Only after she had disappeared into the dark did he lay his own hand on the marker.

“I will protect them father. With my life.” In the distance the lights of the manor glowed warm and bright. He turned towards them. He did not look back.


End file.
